I think I'm going to go home and cry. It's been that kind of day. If I'm online tonight don't expect me to play anything. I'm tired of letting my team down and I'm tired of getting yelled at for letting my team down.
Maybe a mind numbing game of Bejeweled 2 or Boogie Bunnies could do me some good. Or maybe I'll finally connect my PS2 up in my new house and play some Final Fantasy VII. Or maybe I'll just crawl in my bed, when I get home, and go to sleep. It's been that kind of day.
Showing posts with label Bejeweled 2. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bejeweled 2. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Finally!
You might have heard a huge sigh of relief the last two nights. That was me. I finally got two achievements that I've been working on for a long time.
The first achievement was the Purdy Mouth (playing Bullet Marsh 3+ rounds and winning) for Gears of War. My friends took one night and only played that map so a bunch of them picked up the achievement in one night. Unfortunately I wasn't online that night (crazy, I know) so I didn't get to participate in the carnage. Since then my friends have been very reluctant to play that map. Mostly because we all hate it. And because no one likes getting their head popped off by someone they can't even see. Depending on who's hosting our Gears matches at night that map might not be in the rotation. I still have at least one friend who hasn't gotten that achievement yet so I guess we'll still play this map until he gets it. At least I've got it and that makes me happy.
The other time I sighed really wasn't for a particular achievement at all. I just wanted to get ANY achievement in that game. What game was it? Bejeweled 2. I know that probably sounds dumb but I'm having a hard time getting achievements for that game. For the endless one I got up to level 40 something when my save file just vanished after I got booted off of Xbox Live during the middle of a game during that whole Christmas holiday debacle the system was having. Not fun, I tell ya. Since you need 100 or some odd levels to get the Endless achievement I still had a ways to go but I wasn't happy about having to replay the levels I lost.
The Action achievement (I think that's the one) you only need to finish 17 levels. I was only making it up to level 9 before I would get that dreaded "No More Moves" message. I took a break from Bejeweled to play Puzzle Quest and I've found Bejeweled a little bit easier to progress through the levels now. I can still only get up to level 12 in the Action mode but I've earned back 30+ levels in the endless after just a couple of days of trying.
The achievement I got was for completing the Puzzle mode. I use to play that mode every now and then and if I got to a level that I couldn't figure out I would go back to the regular game. I realized the other night that I was close to finishing the puzzle levels . . . and that there were helpful hints available to you. I cruised through all the remaining levels using the hints when I got stuck and it all came down to one level that I couldn't beat. Unfortunately there were no cheats available for this level. I messed around with it one night and couldn't figure it out. The next night I thought I'd try again and after a couple of attempts I finally figured it out. Level complete. Game mode complete. Achievement unlocked!
I finally had an achievement in Bejeweled 2. I've had this game almost as long as I've had my 360. While I'm thrilled I finally got an achievement in that game I feel like the kid who gets overly excited the night before Christmas. When he finally wakes up and open his presents he's left a little underwhelmed about the whole thing. "What? That's it?" He likes what he's got he just can't figure out what all the excitement was for in the first place.
Bejeweled 2 is one of those games where it helps if you can see two or three moves ahead. Kind of like Chess. While I love playing Chess, I'm not very good at it. I can see ahead maybe one or two moves but that usually doesn't take into account my opponent's moves. If you like those types of games you'll probably like Bejeweled 2. And speaking of Chess, I have that game downloaded and no achievements. Oh well. Now I have another game I'll struggle to get an achievements in.
The first achievement was the Purdy Mouth (playing Bullet Marsh 3+ rounds and winning) for Gears of War. My friends took one night and only played that map so a bunch of them picked up the achievement in one night. Unfortunately I wasn't online that night (crazy, I know) so I didn't get to participate in the carnage. Since then my friends have been very reluctant to play that map. Mostly because we all hate it. And because no one likes getting their head popped off by someone they can't even see. Depending on who's hosting our Gears matches at night that map might not be in the rotation. I still have at least one friend who hasn't gotten that achievement yet so I guess we'll still play this map until he gets it. At least I've got it and that makes me happy.
The other time I sighed really wasn't for a particular achievement at all. I just wanted to get ANY achievement in that game. What game was it? Bejeweled 2. I know that probably sounds dumb but I'm having a hard time getting achievements for that game. For the endless one I got up to level 40 something when my save file just vanished after I got booted off of Xbox Live during the middle of a game during that whole Christmas holiday debacle the system was having. Not fun, I tell ya. Since you need 100 or some odd levels to get the Endless achievement I still had a ways to go but I wasn't happy about having to replay the levels I lost.
The Action achievement (I think that's the one) you only need to finish 17 levels. I was only making it up to level 9 before I would get that dreaded "No More Moves" message. I took a break from Bejeweled to play Puzzle Quest and I've found Bejeweled a little bit easier to progress through the levels now. I can still only get up to level 12 in the Action mode but I've earned back 30+ levels in the endless after just a couple of days of trying.
The achievement I got was for completing the Puzzle mode. I use to play that mode every now and then and if I got to a level that I couldn't figure out I would go back to the regular game. I realized the other night that I was close to finishing the puzzle levels . . . and that there were helpful hints available to you. I cruised through all the remaining levels using the hints when I got stuck and it all came down to one level that I couldn't beat. Unfortunately there were no cheats available for this level. I messed around with it one night and couldn't figure it out. The next night I thought I'd try again and after a couple of attempts I finally figured it out. Level complete. Game mode complete. Achievement unlocked!
I finally had an achievement in Bejeweled 2. I've had this game almost as long as I've had my 360. While I'm thrilled I finally got an achievement in that game I feel like the kid who gets overly excited the night before Christmas. When he finally wakes up and open his presents he's left a little underwhelmed about the whole thing. "What? That's it?" He likes what he's got he just can't figure out what all the excitement was for in the first place.
Bejeweled 2 is one of those games where it helps if you can see two or three moves ahead. Kind of like Chess. While I love playing Chess, I'm not very good at it. I can see ahead maybe one or two moves but that usually doesn't take into account my opponent's moves. If you like those types of games you'll probably like Bejeweled 2. And speaking of Chess, I have that game downloaded and no achievements. Oh well. Now I have another game I'll struggle to get an achievements in.
Thursday, May 8, 2008
My best effort . . . and my worst
I found a site a couple of months ago when I was looking for a way to put my Xbox Live profile graphic on this blog. I still haven't made up my mind about that because I do play other systems besides the Xbox 360. No, really I do.
The site is MyGamerCard.net and it has a really cool feature that I use often. After you sign up you can view a list of all the games you've played. It will show a progress bar for the gamerscore and number of achievements you've earned in that game. It lists your games by "last played" by default (although it might be slow to update some times) but you can switch that to alphabetical A-Z or Z-A. It also has a sorting option to display your games in order of the effort you've put in to them compared to the rest of the registered users of the site. You can sort by Best to Worst or Worst to Best effort.
For instance, if you look at my profile my 'best effort' game is Chromehounds. My gamerscore of 580 out of 1,000 is a 349.06% overachievement above the sites average score of 129.16. Considering how hard this game is to get some of the achievements I can believe that. A score of 720 in Chromehounds is the equivalent of 1,000 in any other game.
Now, let's look at my score in Uno. I've finished the game so I have 200/200 points. But that score is only a 54.97% overachievement above the average (129.06). When they released this option on the site they explained that "finishing" Avatar: Burning Earth and getting those 1,000 gamer points will only give you a 3.75% overachievement score. Why is that? Because everyone is playing that game and getting those easy achievements. Not much effort there.
Hopefully you'll have more games listed with a positive or overachievement rating than games with a negative or underachievement rating. But if you're like me you've dabbled a little bit in a lot of games. I've played a lot of Puzzle Quest recently but my gamerscore of 70 in that game is below the 81.34 average so I have an underachievement rating of 13.94%. And then there's Yaris. A game I've only played 2 or 3 times (hey, it was free) and my gamerscore of 10 points is only just short of the 19.79 average (a 49.47% underachievement).
I do have a lot of games with an underachievement rating of 100% because I haven't scored any achievements in them yet. I've played Bejeweled 2 many times, for long hours, but I still haven't heard that little bleep and seen an achievement pop up. But while my gamerscore of 0 has an underachievement rating of 100% it's not that far below the average score of 25.38.
And then there's Tempest. Based on the fact that no one on the leaderboards has received all the achievements for this game so you can bet this is one game that's hard to get achievements in (whether through gameplay or tough achievements). If you couple the leaderboards with the fact that the average gamerscore for this game from people on the site is only 3.73 points any achievement earned in this game is going to be an overachievement. My score is currently 0 so even if I get just one little 5 point achievement in this game I'll go from 100% underachiever to a 1.34% overachiever. It's not much but my number will go from in the red (underachievement) to green (overachievement).
It's really cool to see what games I'm underachieving in but within an achievement or two or the site's average and then try to play that game in order to get those achievements. I'm only a 1.56% underachiever in Luxor 2 by only .95 gamerpoints. Any achievement there will turn things around. Some of my other marginally underachieving games are Gauntlet, Boom Boom Rocket, Zuma, Joust, Word Puzzle, Tetris Splash, Poker Smash, Ikaruga, and Gears of War. An achievement or two in any of those games would put me on the plus side.
There's a leaderboard where you can look at the leaders overall, by a specific game or by gamerzone (i.e. Pro, recreation, etc.) or other options. You can also check out other people's scores and progress and see what games they've underachieved in and then point that out to them when they start bragging about their game prowess. There's a forum (the only video game forum I can access while at work) and a LiveTracker that lets you see which games registered site users are in at that time. Right now there's 27 in Call of Duty 4, 13 in Gears of War, and 198 in Grand Theft Auto 4 (that's down from the near 400 usually) and a lot of other games.
I picked up 15 points in Solitaire last night and that jumped my overachievement rating from 120.89% to 159.07%. Now you might think I'm crazy and obsessed with achievements or gamerscores . . . okay maybe I am just a little . . . but it's nice to know how my game playing stacks up with everyone else. It use to be the mark of your game playing skills and effort was getting to put three letters in next to your high score at the arcade. Now, it's achievements and gamerscores. And if I'm hoping to break the 10,000 gamerscore point barrier this year knowing where my best efforts are being made is nice. Besides all those negative ratings just make me want to take a day off and turn those negatives into positives. Oh wait, I'm already taking Monday off to play games. Too bad my job can't get me this motivated and productive. Maybe if my job had achievements too.
Beep.
Achievement Unlocked.
Arrived to work on time 5 points
The site is MyGamerCard.net and it has a really cool feature that I use often. After you sign up you can view a list of all the games you've played. It will show a progress bar for the gamerscore and number of achievements you've earned in that game. It lists your games by "last played" by default (although it might be slow to update some times) but you can switch that to alphabetical A-Z or Z-A. It also has a sorting option to display your games in order of the effort you've put in to them compared to the rest of the registered users of the site. You can sort by Best to Worst or Worst to Best effort.
For instance, if you look at my profile my 'best effort' game is Chromehounds. My gamerscore of 580 out of 1,000 is a 349.06% overachievement above the sites average score of 129.16. Considering how hard this game is to get some of the achievements I can believe that. A score of 720 in Chromehounds is the equivalent of 1,000 in any other game.
Now, let's look at my score in Uno. I've finished the game so I have 200/200 points. But that score is only a 54.97% overachievement above the average (129.06). When they released this option on the site they explained that "finishing" Avatar: Burning Earth and getting those 1,000 gamer points will only give you a 3.75% overachievement score. Why is that? Because everyone is playing that game and getting those easy achievements. Not much effort there.
Hopefully you'll have more games listed with a positive or overachievement rating than games with a negative or underachievement rating. But if you're like me you've dabbled a little bit in a lot of games. I've played a lot of Puzzle Quest recently but my gamerscore of 70 in that game is below the 81.34 average so I have an underachievement rating of 13.94%. And then there's Yaris. A game I've only played 2 or 3 times (hey, it was free) and my gamerscore of 10 points is only just short of the 19.79 average (a 49.47% underachievement).
I do have a lot of games with an underachievement rating of 100% because I haven't scored any achievements in them yet. I've played Bejeweled 2 many times, for long hours, but I still haven't heard that little bleep and seen an achievement pop up. But while my gamerscore of 0 has an underachievement rating of 100% it's not that far below the average score of 25.38.
And then there's Tempest. Based on the fact that no one on the leaderboards has received all the achievements for this game so you can bet this is one game that's hard to get achievements in (whether through gameplay or tough achievements). If you couple the leaderboards with the fact that the average gamerscore for this game from people on the site is only 3.73 points any achievement earned in this game is going to be an overachievement. My score is currently 0 so even if I get just one little 5 point achievement in this game I'll go from 100% underachiever to a 1.34% overachiever. It's not much but my number will go from in the red (underachievement) to green (overachievement).
It's really cool to see what games I'm underachieving in but within an achievement or two or the site's average and then try to play that game in order to get those achievements. I'm only a 1.56% underachiever in Luxor 2 by only .95 gamerpoints. Any achievement there will turn things around. Some of my other marginally underachieving games are Gauntlet, Boom Boom Rocket, Zuma, Joust, Word Puzzle, Tetris Splash, Poker Smash, Ikaruga, and Gears of War. An achievement or two in any of those games would put me on the plus side.
There's a leaderboard where you can look at the leaders overall, by a specific game or by gamerzone (i.e. Pro, recreation, etc.) or other options. You can also check out other people's scores and progress and see what games they've underachieved in and then point that out to them when they start bragging about their game prowess. There's a forum (the only video game forum I can access while at work) and a LiveTracker that lets you see which games registered site users are in at that time. Right now there's 27 in Call of Duty 4, 13 in Gears of War, and 198 in Grand Theft Auto 4 (that's down from the near 400 usually) and a lot of other games.
I picked up 15 points in Solitaire last night and that jumped my overachievement rating from 120.89% to 159.07%. Now you might think I'm crazy and obsessed with achievements or gamerscores . . . okay maybe I am just a little . . . but it's nice to know how my game playing stacks up with everyone else. It use to be the mark of your game playing skills and effort was getting to put three letters in next to your high score at the arcade. Now, it's achievements and gamerscores. And if I'm hoping to break the 10,000 gamerscore point barrier this year knowing where my best efforts are being made is nice. Besides all those negative ratings just make me want to take a day off and turn those negatives into positives. Oh wait, I'm already taking Monday off to play games. Too bad my job can't get me this motivated and productive. Maybe if my job had achievements too.
Beep.
Achievement Unlocked.
Arrived to work on time 5 points
Thursday, April 10, 2008
I finished a game!
Yeah I finished a game! Okay, when I tell you it was Uno are you going to be disappointed that I got your hopes up? That makes four Xbox Live Arcade games that I've finished: Carcassonne, Backgammon, Jewel Quest and now Uno.
Yes, I know there really isn't an "end" to Uno. It's not like you get the great dramatic moment and then you get to see the credits roll. But I've finished the achievements. Now I can play the game without those hanging over my head.
I'm only two achievements short of "finishing" Catan. All I need are 500 Victory points and 1,000 Victory points. I really like that game. Unfortunately my internet connection at my place doesn't. I always lag out of the game. It use to be right after the initial placements then WHAM I'm staring at three AI faces. Now I usually make it a little longer in the game (maybe a round or two) before I lose connection. I had to stop playing it for awhile because my reputation was taking a beating from all the "quitting" feedback I was getting. I went from 98% to 80% in the matter of about a two week period. The funny thing is I can take my system over to my parent's house and play just fine. It's only my internet the game doesn't like.
With Uno there was a time when I didn't think I would ever get those 40 wins. When ever I played a four player game (all humans) it would seem to take forever for anyone to play their cards. Playing a game to 250 points could take two and half hours. I didn't want to invest that much time in something that I would probably lose anyway. When I started hosting matches with a point limit at 100 I thought would speed things up a bit. The problem was I couldn't keep four players in the room. I finally got the achievement for winning 10 four player games when I had 17 total multiplayer wins. I got my 40 win achievement when I had 38 multiplayer wins . . . but then I realized it's 40 total wins and I have some wins for ranked matches.
Now that Uno is complete I'm going to have to pick another Arcade game to work on for achievements. I know it's not as much fun playing for achievements as just playing the game. But when I pick a game I just try to play it normally but I keep in mind what achievements I might be in line to pick up. Kind of like the "don't hit any obstacles through the first 20 levels" in Crystal Quest. I know about the achievement and I try to play the game so I can get it but always around levels 13-15 I run into something and now I can't get the achievement. I could just restart the game and try again but I continue to play to see how far I can get and there might be another achievement I could pick up instead. I like having a goal to work towards. Maybe that's why I never liked Grand Theft Auto III when I owned it (rather briefly I might add).
I've been "auditioning" games for my next big focused attack. They are AstroPop, Bejeweled 2 (although I completely lost my saved game of 33 levels when I got dumped from Xbox Live when the new Call of Duty maps were released), Boogie Bunnies (lost a save on that one but I've since earned it back), Hexic HD & Hexic 2 (can't decide which one I like more), Poker Smash (gets a little boring after playing for a long time), Luxor 2 (I'm finally at a point in the game where it's getting difficult) and Texas Hold 'Em (although last time I made a push to get a $100,000 bankroll I got up to $80,000+ when the leaderboards were reset because of cheaters and I lost everything).
I like having a "go to" game I can play on my own. Something to take the edge off of a bad day. Or maybe just to kill time before I have to really get up and start doing something with my life (as my mother would say). And although I try to play it every day there's no way I'm going to make Brain Challenge the game I grind in. It's taking all my brain power just to get a rating of 19% on the daily tests. If I ever make it to 100% it would be a miracle. So that's one game I won't be finishing anytime soon.
Yes, I know there really isn't an "end" to Uno. It's not like you get the great dramatic moment and then you get to see the credits roll. But I've finished the achievements. Now I can play the game without those hanging over my head.
I'm only two achievements short of "finishing" Catan. All I need are 500 Victory points and 1,000 Victory points. I really like that game. Unfortunately my internet connection at my place doesn't. I always lag out of the game. It use to be right after the initial placements then WHAM I'm staring at three AI faces. Now I usually make it a little longer in the game (maybe a round or two) before I lose connection. I had to stop playing it for awhile because my reputation was taking a beating from all the "quitting" feedback I was getting. I went from 98% to 80% in the matter of about a two week period. The funny thing is I can take my system over to my parent's house and play just fine. It's only my internet the game doesn't like.
With Uno there was a time when I didn't think I would ever get those 40 wins. When ever I played a four player game (all humans) it would seem to take forever for anyone to play their cards. Playing a game to 250 points could take two and half hours. I didn't want to invest that much time in something that I would probably lose anyway. When I started hosting matches with a point limit at 100 I thought would speed things up a bit. The problem was I couldn't keep four players in the room. I finally got the achievement for winning 10 four player games when I had 17 total multiplayer wins. I got my 40 win achievement when I had 38 multiplayer wins . . . but then I realized it's 40 total wins and I have some wins for ranked matches.
Now that Uno is complete I'm going to have to pick another Arcade game to work on for achievements. I know it's not as much fun playing for achievements as just playing the game. But when I pick a game I just try to play it normally but I keep in mind what achievements I might be in line to pick up. Kind of like the "don't hit any obstacles through the first 20 levels" in Crystal Quest. I know about the achievement and I try to play the game so I can get it but always around levels 13-15 I run into something and now I can't get the achievement. I could just restart the game and try again but I continue to play to see how far I can get and there might be another achievement I could pick up instead. I like having a goal to work towards. Maybe that's why I never liked Grand Theft Auto III when I owned it (rather briefly I might add).
I've been "auditioning" games for my next big focused attack. They are AstroPop, Bejeweled 2 (although I completely lost my saved game of 33 levels when I got dumped from Xbox Live when the new Call of Duty maps were released), Boogie Bunnies (lost a save on that one but I've since earned it back), Hexic HD & Hexic 2 (can't decide which one I like more), Poker Smash (gets a little boring after playing for a long time), Luxor 2 (I'm finally at a point in the game where it's getting difficult) and Texas Hold 'Em (although last time I made a push to get a $100,000 bankroll I got up to $80,000+ when the leaderboards were reset because of cheaters and I lost everything).
I like having a "go to" game I can play on my own. Something to take the edge off of a bad day. Or maybe just to kill time before I have to really get up and start doing something with my life (as my mother would say). And although I try to play it every day there's no way I'm going to make Brain Challenge the game I grind in. It's taking all my brain power just to get a rating of 19% on the daily tests. If I ever make it to 100% it would be a miracle. So that's one game I won't be finishing anytime soon.
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